THE GRUDGE
Bleak House
RELEASED 1 JUNE (download out now)
2020 | 15 | Blu-ray/DVD/download
Director Nicolas Pesce
Cast Andrea Riseborough,
Demián Bichir, John Cho, Betty Gilpin
The thirteenth entry in the Japanese-born Ju-On franchise (the fourth made in the USA) is in many respects admirably classy. Sure, it has the regulation jump scares – some of the best borrowed from previous Grudge movies. But newcomer Nicolas Pesce makes a sincere attempt to ground the scares in believable relationships, with characters variously struggling with bereavement, senility and the diagnosis of a genetic disorder in an unborn child. And the amber-tinged cinematography is really rather pretty.
So why doesn’t it really work? The problem is the time-hopping structure, which switches between the present-day investigations of Andrea Riseborough’s single-mom cop Muldoon into events at a cursed house in Philadelphia, and two other time-frames featuring previous doomed inhabitants. Riseborough acts her socks off, but these digressions hobble her, making Muldoon seem less central – and leaving the viewer feeling detached and faintly confused.
Extras The seven deleted scenes are worth a watch, as they betray extensive changes; there’s even more downbeat realism, with an alternate ending where Muldoon tries to hang herself. Three brief featurettes include a run-down of the Easter eggs. Ian Berriman
The number four occurs repeatedly because it’s unlucky in Japan, where “four” and “death” sound the same.